Roger Malina

Professor

Roger F. Malina is an art-science researcher, astronomer and editor. He is a Distinguished Professor of Arts and Technology and Professor of Physics at the University of Texas, Dallas where he is developing an Art-Science R and D and Experimental Publishing program. He is a Directeur de Recherche of the CNRS and former Director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence at Aix-Marseille University. His scientific specialty is in space instrumentation and big data problems; he was the Principal Investigator for the NASA Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer Satellite at the University of California, Berkeley. He also has been involved for 25 years with the Leonardo organization whose mission is to promote and make visible work that explores the interaction of the arts and sciences and the arts and new technologies. Since 1982 he has been the Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. More recently he has helped set up the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMERA) and is co chair of the ASIL (Arts, Sciences, Instrumentation and Language) Initiative of IMERA which hosts artists in residence in scientific research laboratories of the Marseille region.

The human senses are incredibly efficient filters. They exclude from our perception almost all knowledge about the world beyond our skin and inside our bodies. Over the eons of human evolution, our senses have evolved to allow us to detect just enough information about the world so that we can survive and procreate.
Our senses did not evolve in the context of a creature trying to understand the content and processes governing the evolution of the universe. It is perhaps surprising that we understand as much as we do.
As a result of the inefficiency and bias of the senses, the history of science does not follow a logical path of increasing completeness. Instead the history of science is punctuated by the introduction into the scientific methods of ideas and methods from outside of science. The scientific method itself evolves. Facts,theories and methods which would not have been considered "scientific' a hundred years ago, are now mainstream science. And scientific certainties are reframed in the new light of the new scientific method.
In this essay I argue that one of the reasons for encouraging the interaction of art and science is to facilitate the migration of ideas and methods from outside of science into science. I call this the "strong case" for art-science interaction. The "weak case" is the reverse process, ie the introduction with ideas and technologies from the techno-sciences into the arts, or the use of art and design to do science more efficiently